34But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"
37Jesus said to him, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and great commandment. 39And the second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
This question surprises me. It says they posed it to Jesus to test Him. Test Him on what? His knowledge of the scripture? He has easily proven His knowledge of the scripture. So I don’t see how this is testing Jesus.
But maybe it has more to do with the struggles that the Pharisees face with the law. They had so many laws to follow that it was almost impossible to follow them all. And if they couldn’t follow them all, which were the more important ones? They were sticklers for all the fine details. And here it is a lawyer who is asking the question, a lawyer who was assumed to know the laws better than anyone else. Maybe they felt that if Jesus named one commandment as the great commandment that they could point out other commandments just as great. Or maybe the lawyer had on occasion had to personally make decisions on which commandments were greater.
But Jesus easily pointed out the greatest commandment. One they could not argue with. But then He followed it up by stating one other commandment which encompassed all other laws.
In front of Jesus were the Pharisees whose religion was overburdened with too many laws. Here was a lawyer who had probably studied all the laws and probably provided help in interpretation of the many laws. And Jesus just took all their knowledge and expertise and summarized it in two commands. What a blow to the ego!
But this also emphasized that knowing what God commands of you is easy to remember. You do not need an army of experts interpreting the law for you. If you are ever in a quandary of what is right and what is wrong, simply remember “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”